YPFP Events

Nov 21, 2013

At the Crossroads of Science and Foreign Policy: Climate Change

November 21, 2013 06:30 pm

Please RSVP here. Note that this event is co-sponsored and seating is limited.

Climate change is like walking home from a day at the beach -- a day when you forgot your sunscreen. You may feel fine now, but the damage is done. You're going to hurt later. And get out of the sun before the burn gets worse.

It's time to make hard choices about how to respond to climate change. For example, think of all of those cute animals that you want to save: polar bears and penguins, frogs and foxes. Climate change is going to lead to their extinction (full story here). Rather than saving these animals, do we need to redouble our research funding and policy efforts to stop global warming before we, too, are unable to take the heat?

Join members of the scientific, energy, and foreign policy communities for an evening of active discussion in the fourth and final event of the program series, At the Crossroads of Science and Foreign Policy. Featured speakers will explore how science and technology can be used to combat one of our greatest global challenges: climate change. Following the speakers' presentations, a structured audience discussion will challenge attendees to draw from their own experiences and knowledge to further explore climate change as it relates to the larger scientific, energy, and foreign policy communities.

The power of science and technology to change society and the lives of people is well appreciated. Scientific questions with large societal impact can have direct consequences for foreign policy: projections of global warming, food insecurity, the race for the atomic bomb in the 1940s, and the reproductive health revolution caused by the contraceptive pill are all examples. Today we are witnesses to the unintended consequences of our scientific and technological progress: anthropogenic climate change. Climate change is a global challenge that threatens our coastlines and infrastructure: hurricanes threaten our cities and stress our emergency response systems, and droughts stress our communities and may usher in an unprecedented era of population migration. Science and technology are at the root of this challenge and may also provide options for adaptation and mitigation.

The Climate Change event will showcase examples in which science and technology have helped us rise to the challenge of anthropogenic climate change through foreign policy interventions, international collaborations, and the involvement of energy industries.

Speakers

David Michel, PhD, Director of Environmental Security at the Stimson Institute

At the Crossroads of Science and Foreign Policy is a program series co-sponsored by the AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellows, Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, and the Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences. This month, we’re pleased to be co-sponsored by Young Professionals in Energy as well. Monthly events in the Crossroads series throughout fall 2013 provide a forum for active discussion of emerging topics at the intersection of science and foreign policy.